Latest revision as of 05:49, 29 July 2012

Hatnotes look like this.

Hatnotes are short notes placed at the top of an article before the primary topic, generally either 1) to provide disambiguation of closely related terms or 2) to summarise a topic, and explain its boundaries. "Hatnote" is also a polite term to refer to improper disambiguation links which exceed standard length, link directly to trivial topics instead of a disambiguation page.

This style guideline is intended to make this process more efficient by giving article pages a consistent look, and avoiding distracting information (such as extraneous links).

Contents

Format

In most cases, a standard disambiguation template should be used. This permits the form and structure to change gracefully and uniformly over time. Currently, each note should be italicized and indented, without a bullet before the item. A horizontal dividing line (<hr /> or ----) should not be placed under a note, nor after the final item in a list.

Summarize or not?

There is an ongoing dispute (in larger wikis) as to whether hatnote disambiguation templates should include a brief summary of the article's topic in their first sentence if they refer to "other uses".

Pro-summarizers argue that it's confusing and bad style to write the hatnote such that the reader must read the words "other uses", look down a line, and read the first sentence or paragraph before being able to understand what the "other uses" actually refers to. Anti-summarizers feel, on the other hand, that it's pointless and annoying to duplicate a description that should be in the lead paragraph anyway.

Note that this argument is inapplicable to cases where only one other use exists. If the phrase "other uses" does not exist, it would appear no one would strongly favor including an article summary, so it's best to use a template such as {{for}}.

Placement

Place hatnotes at the very top of the article, before images and templates (like navigational templates), but below maintenance templates (like "inuse" templates) For example:

In terms of document structure, it is awkward to have article content, then meta content, then article content again. Analogously, in HTML it would be bad form to put <title> and <meta> tags within <body>.

In terms of accessibility, not everyone is using or has the CSS functionality that "floats" images and templates to the right or left, which in turn gives many people the perception that a hatnote placed after an image or template looks OK. Imagine if someone without CSS landed on this version of Wikipedia's Bread article but happened to be in the wrong place. They'd have to scroll, or perhaps in the case of a blind user, have their screen reader trodge through a long "cuisine" template before reaching the navigation aid they desire. Likewise, those who redistribute[1] wiki content may choose to change or eliminate CSS entirely. (To test the CSS-less realm in Firefox, go to View, Page Style, No Style.)

Similarly, international wikis may decide to change the look of the hatnote templates in the future. If such a change were made, hatnotes that look fine now despite not being at the very top of the article would visually clash with proximate images and templates.

Examples of proper use

Two articles with the same title

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When two articles share the same title, the unambiguated article should include a hatnote with a link to the other article. It is not necessary to create a separate disambiguation page. {{otheruses4}} may be used for this.